Convicted killer Antoinette Frank appears in court

Antoinette Frank returned to an Orleans Parish courtroom this morning, almost 13 years after a jury condemned her to die by lethal injection for a 1995 rampage that left three people dead at a local Vietnamese restaurant.

Prosecutors and relatives of one victim gathered with the expectation that the state court would issue an order for Frank's execution.

But Judge Frank Marullo, who presided over her trial and set today's hearing, postponed the matter after meeting with Frank's appellate lawyers. At issue is Frank's recent appeal to the United States Supreme Court, which on Feb. 19 refused to review her death sentence.

Frank's attorneys have 25 days from that ruling to ask for a rehearing. Marullo said he had called today's hearing prematurely and rescheduled it for April 14.

Seperate juries found that Frank and Rogers LaCaze orchestrated an ambush on the Kim Anh restaurant in eastern New Orleans in 1995, and deserve execution for gunning down NOPD officer Ronald Williams, and siblings Ha and Cuong Vu.

Williams, 25, had worked with Frank in 1995 when she was a 23-year-old NOPD rookie officer moonlighting at the Kim Anh for security details.

Williams' family filled the front row in Marullo's courtroom this morning. Williams' father said he is frustrated with the criminal justice system, but will continue to closely follow Frank's appeals, in the hopes that the state will execute her for the triple murder that rocked New Orleans and became the nadir for the long-trouble police department.

Frank, it turned out, had failed portions of the psychological exams needed for admittance to the police academy and should never have been issued a badge and gun, the public learned only after the Kim Anh murders.

"I would rather she be executed, then I wouldn't have to see her in court again," said Ronald Williams, the father of slain NOPD officer Ronald Williams. "Forgiveness, no. It's turned lives upside down, with our families and her family."

LaCaze, 18 at the time of the murders, also received the death penalty. At their separate back-to-back trials, each tried to blame the other for plotting and carrying out the Kim Anh attack.

Louisiana hasn't executed a convict since 2001. Frank was one of the last convicted killers condemend to die by an Orleans Parish jury, as juries over the past decade have been reluctant to hand down the death penalty.

The last New Orleans murderer sent to death row was Phillip Anthony, for the 1996 triple killing at the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen in the French Quarter. He remains on death row at the Angola men's prison.

Frank on Wednesday returned to her home at the women's prison in St. Gabriel, where she is one of two women awaiting a death sentence in Louisiana.

An Orleans Parish jury sentenced Frank to death on October 20, 1995, seven months after the triple homicide shocked a city grappling with an escalating murder rate.

At trial, Chau Vu recalled witnessing Frank, who had worked a police detail at the popular Vietnamese restaurant, enter the eatery with an 18-year-old LaCaze for a third time in one night. Vu went to hide money in a microwave, only to return to the dining room to find Frank pushing her back into the kitchen.

Chau Vu said she heard gunshots behind Frank. Vu and her brother hid in a darkened freezer, peering through a window to watch as Frank and LaCaze ran back and forth through the kitchen and hearing more gunshots. Chau and Quoc Vu finally emerged to find the restaurant's on-duty police officer, Williams, lying shot in the head, and their sister, Ha Vu, 24, and brother, Cuong Vu, 18, motionless on the floor.